For this purpose the person whose proposal is accepted
declares his project to be to set up a monopoly on the part of the
Company against the monopoly of the Chinese merchants: but as the
Chinese monopoly is at home, and supported (as the minute referred to
asserts) by the country magistrates, it is plain it is the Chinese
company, not the English, which must prescribe the terms,--particularly
in a commodity which, if withheld from them at their market price, they
can, whenever they please, be certain of purchasing as a condemned
contraband.
There are two further circumstances in this transaction which strongly
mark its character. The first is, that this adventure to China was not
recommended to them by the factory of Canton; it was dangerous to
attempt it without their previous advice, and an assurance, grounded on
the state of the market and the dispositions of the government, that the
measure, in a commercial light, would be profitable, or at least safe.
Neither was that factory applied to on the state of the bills which,
upon their own account, they might be obliged to draw upon Europe, at a
time when the Council of Bengal direct them to draw bills to so enormous
an amount.
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